Beyond the Footsie: Wed close

Football pools firm Sportech provided some direction in a drifting small caps market Wednesday - but not the kind its shareholders would have wanted. The shares fell 7.4% to 15 1/4p after the firm posted a loss for the four months to July and announced the resignation of its finance director.

The company, which bought Littlewoods Leisure from The Littlewoods Organisation in the summer, was required to publish a second interim report due to an accounting period change. Its finance director is leaving because Sportech is relocating to Liverpool from Edinburgh.

Elsewhere, small cap pickings were thin. 'There aren't enough retail investors around today to drive the stocks much in either direction,' a market maker said. By midafternoon, the FTSE Smallcap Index had fallen seven points to 3,267.20.

Getmapping.com, the aerial mapping firm, bounced nearly 16% to 57 1/2p. The share fell recently to around 45p, after the company said sales were below expectations due to problems with its key website access point. 'There's nothing new in the stock,' said another dealer. 'When you get conditions like these it doesn't take much for a stock to squeeze higher.'

The share has dropped from a high of 237 1/2p after Getmapping's flotation in April as investors turned away from dotcoms. Just 30,385 shares changed hands Wednesday. Industrial coatings and air filtration products maker McLeod Russel Holdings rose 15% to 60 1/2p, again in low volume. The story was similar in Games Workshop, up 9% to 137p on turnover of 477,297. The shares have risen from around 101p since last Friday, after a steady decline from around 195p since early June.